Biosynthesis of precious metabolites in callus cultures of Eclipta alba

• Published in: Plant cell, tissue and organ culture Vol. 135; no. 2; pp. 287 - 298
• Main Authors: Khurshid, Razia, Khan, Taimoor, Zaeem, Afifa, Garros, Laurine, Hano, Christophe, Abbasi, Bilal Haider
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.11.2018; Springer Nature B.V; Springer Verlag
• Subjects: Acetic acid; Antioxidants; Benzyladenine; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biosynthesis; Biotechnology; Callus; Callus culture; Coumarin; Eclipta alba; Explants; Flavonoids; Growth regulators; Herbal medicine; High performance liquid chromatography; Leaves; Life Sciences; Liquid chromatography; Medicinal plants; Metabolites; Naphthalene; Original Article; Phenols; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Plant growth; Plant Pathology; Plant Physiology; Plant Sciences; Secondary metabolites; Thidiazuron; Wedelolactone; Secondary metabolites; Flavonoids; Plant Growth Regulators; Antioxidant activity; wedelolactone; eclipta alba; secondary metabolites; plant growth regulators; flavonoids; antioxidant activity
• ISSN: 0167-6857; 1573-5044
• DOI: 10.1007/s11240-018-1463-0

Eclipta alba (False daisy) is an important medicinal plant with well-known antihepatotoxic activity. However, no previous in vitro studies are available for its callus culture for increased production of antioxidant secondary metabolites. Herein, we maintained a competent protocol for callus culture of E. alba using stem and leaf explants grown on MS medium containing various concentrations of thidiazuron, 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) either alone or in association with α-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA). Among all the applied plant growth regulators, BAP along with NAA resulted in maximal dry biomass of 18.0 and 13.8 g/l for stem and leaf explants, respectively. Furthermore, the highest production of phenolics (375.7 mg/l for stem-associated callus and 298 mg/l for leaf-associated callus) and flavonoids (62.0 and 52.3 mg/l for stem- and leaf-associated callus, respectively) were found to be present in optimized callus culture. Antioxidant activity was also elucidated for both stem and leaf derived calli. The highest antioxidant activities (~ 93.5%) were witnessed for stem and leaf associated calli at set concentrations of 3.0 mg/l BAP + 1.0 mg/l NAA and 4.0 mg/l BAP, respectively. High-performance liquid chromatography analyses revealed optimum accumulation of coumarin (1.98 mg/g DW) and wedelolactone (49.63 mg/g DW) in leaf associated callus and desmethylwedelolactone (69.96 mg/g DW), β-amyrin (0.8179 mg/g DW) and eclalbatin (0.3202 mg/g DW) in stem associated callus at optimized concentration.